The MtBE removal effectiveness of air sparging, tested on an intermediate scale laboratory apparatus

Among all the in-situ groundwater remediation treatments, aimed to remove MtBE and the other gasoline components, the Air Sparging (AS) has been widely used since it is one of the best established economical and reliable technologies for the remediation of volatile compounds dissolved in groundwater. Even though AS has been successfully applied at several contaminated sites, the airflow distribution in saturated media and the interactions of various physical-chemical processes during AS operations are still not well understood. This experimental study was aimed to investigate the effectiveness of AS in dissolved MtBE removal from a saturated media, performing a removal test under confined and controlled conditions in an intermediate scale tank (m 1 x 1 x 1,2). The experimental conditions have been focused to study the stripping process driven by the air injection, since stripping is considered to be the most effective among the removal processes driven by AS, in the short terms of its in situ application. The study confirmed that in-situ AS has a significant potential for remediating groundwater contaminated by MtBE, showing that the stripping action driven by the air injection give such a strong contribution to the comprehensive removal action of the AS technology.